A Few Rants About The Phone I really dont like talking on the phone

[brandice 0]

I just answered the phone and it was for the last people who had this number. It's been over a year now and people are still calling for them. The one upside to this is that the people have a hilarious last name. But that's getting old.The first problem with this guy who just called was that he was screaming. He was so loud that my ear is still ringing. The second problem was that he wanted to keep talking to me after he found out it was a wrong number. I know telemarketers sometimes do that, but I have this problem where any strange guy who calls wants to keep talking to me. This guy was trying to collect some money, there's no reason to talk to me about it. It's so weird, and creepy to me that guys have to start asking me personal questions over the phone. I've stopped answering them. If I had a nickel for every time someone has asked me how old I was over the phone I would be so rich. I can't help it if I sound really, really young. This comes from people that call here or people that I have to call for any sort of business in my life. If you knew how often that question was followed up by, "so... do you have a boyfriend?" it would make you sick. I just want to sign up for a class or order a pizza. What do they think is going to happen, really? Am I going to start talking dirty? Am I going to want to meet them? Just go back to work crazy phone call guys. sheesh.

[boyCradle 0]

I have also experienced these things and I really hated it, as well. They (the telemarketers) would usually call while I am in a middle of something, and being a respectful person I listern to them while they are talking. I have friends and former classmates who work as telemarketers and call center agents that is why I still respect those callers. But what i hate the most are those credit card companies and the Electric Power company who keep on calling asking if we have aalready paid our monthly dues! I hate them! Why are they calling?! They should know in the first place if we have already paid the monthly dues. And everytime I ask them the due date for the particular billing, the date is still a week or more. The would say afterwards that they are just reminding us, and not trying to require us to pay sooner.

[dark_drgn 0]

HA, telemarketers are so stupid! There was this one time where i picked up and they we're like, "Omg, i think i have the wrong number, who is this?" I thought it was so stupid and hung up. Then the same person calls back and goes, is this mr. so and so, then i replied no, and she goes "I'm sorry, i think i got the wrong number, who is this?" and i hang up again. And the idiot keeps calling back trying to get me to tell her my stupid name.

[anwiii 17]

I just answered the phone and it was for the last people who had this number. It's been over a year now and people are still calling for them. The one upside to this is that the people have a hilarious last name. But that's getting old.

first of all, what was the name???? got me curious....

second of all, you have the option to block specific #'s

third of all, have fun with it. talk jibberish. make up words. use a fake accent where they wont be able to understand you. tell 'm your a lezbian and play the role. tell 'm your a really a guy but born with this screwed up voice....then start hot chatting these guys AS a guy....see how long they stay on the phone. make it a game. i would. add a little spice to something that frustrates you. life isn't supposed to be so stressfull...heheheh

or you could always ask for their # so you can call them right back, then *67 before you call back 100 times. see how THEY like it

but if you are really getting tired of the calls. there's a national block list you can sign up for through your telephone company. you can also manually block individual #'s, or heck, if it's really bad, i woulda just changed my # if it was a new one.

[Zythrix 0]

I HATE talking on the phone but for some reason people love to call me. My cell phone plan has 1500 minutes, free nights and weekends and unlimited mobile to mobile. I still use about 1300 mins in addition to the off-peak minutes and minutes used talking to other people on the same carrier. So realistically, I use about 3000 mins a month. Then there's SMS. I have unlimited SMS on my plan and I send about 2500 SMS messages a month.For someone who hates phones I sure do use them a lot heh.

[Togi 0]

Heh... I hate using the phone when I'm at home, and I almost never mess with my cell.. I just dont like to chat. But for some reason, I love answering the phone at work o.o Page the customers to another department, or tell them who is (or isnt o.o) working today.. it's fun.

[Arigato 0]

I also dislike the phone. This is because I have to stop whatever I'm doing and walk over to the phone to answer it many times a day. I am always getting killed in games because I leave my computer. On top of that I get really annoyed if I have to stop whatever I'm doing for a telemarketer. However, I don't get many calls from them now. Where I live it is illegal for telemarketers to call you again if you ask them not to. So the next time you are on the phone with a telemarketer you might want to tell them not to call your number.

[Mich 0]

I just answered the phone and it was for the last people who had this number. It's been over a year now and people are still calling for them.

And would you believe that we received yet another call today for the previous owners of our phone number. It happened to be a BAR/PUB that burned down some 35 years ago. Usually the callers are a little under the weather (tipsy) but this one wasn't. The problem is really that we get calls from wives looking for errant husbands that they think are at the bar/pub. The bar/pub does exist, but by the time they rebuilt it, the phone number had been given to us. Their new number, if you can call it that after 35 years, is in the phone book and has been for all those years, but somehow people just keep calling our number instead. There is even an employee there with the same first name as mine, which of course if they ask for her and I have answered the phone is really confusing.

 

As for talking on the phone, this is not a habit of mine. My husband is the phone talker in our family. He spends more time talking to friends and neighbors on the phone than I do using the connection for my puter. I seldom initiate a phone call for anything except business matters and this forum.

[terminal2k 0]

most of you sound like you could have your problems fixed by getting a new numberon the topic of telemarketers, i work in a call centre (i'm not calling people anymore, people call me instead) but when i was doing outbound calling I must say that the management of the centre did not care what you said or did as long as you made the sales they wanted you to. the problem with the industry is that companies can contact large quantities of people in a short period of time and have a person to "close" the sale with you rather than just sending you the deal in writing, which you will usually forget about. also this method of marketing can be very profitable and by using things like outsourced call centres (places that make the calls for you) they can just pretend all the dodgy things aren't happening. Until large groups of people start acting (things like changing companies to one that doesn't use these marketing techniques) there will be no change, and you will keep getting those calls just when you're about to do something

Edited April 5, 2006 by terminal2k (see edit history)

[Zythrix 0]

Until large groups of people start acting (things like changing companies to one that doesn't use these marketing techniques) there will be no change, and you will keep getting those calls just when you're about to do something

Every major cellular provider in the United States uses outsourcing and all these other marketing techniques you mentioned. Trust me, I've worked for T-Mobile, Verizon, Nextel, BoostMobile and Cingular.

The only way to avoid all of this, is to not use ANY of the companies.. which isn't really feasable is it?

[wariorpk 0]

The exact same thing happened to me. I am going to call the person annonymous phone owner for privacy issues. I got my shiny new cell phone I start getting these calls from people I don't know because annonymous phone owner did not tie up their loose ends. I have gotten calls about how I owe money on this. How I need to go paint this house and never did. How I should answer my phone and I get constantly cussed at. How come cell phone companys have to reuse numbers from unreliable people who can not pay their bills. Worste of all, when I tell these people I have the wrong number they keep calling asking for annonymous phone owner. Its just annoying and I wish that they would get the point.

[terminal2k 0]

well i dont know about the US but here in OZ cell phone companies have to put numbers into a "unusable" pool for 6 months before they can be re-assigned to anyone else.and Zythrix, is there any smaller providers you could use?

[brandice 0]

I thought there was an "unusable" time with numbers here, too. But I guess there isn't. To answer an earlier question, the people's last name sometimes get's pronounce "buggy" and other times the callers will say "boogie." A couple of time ladies have tried to make it sound fancy and French. I got a more disturbing call the next day. Maybe some guy dialing random numbers and hoping to get a girl to answer. Yuck. But there is the theory going around that bill collector guy decided to call back in his off-time with his normal "not work" voice. I don't need to get into any more detail but that sort of thing is really, really creepy.

[Mich 0]

most of you sound like you could have your problems fixed by getting a new number.

Easy for you to say. But, whoa there. There are expenses involved with changing numbers in the US. One even has to pay here to have an unlisted number. We here in Mich pay all sorts of access fees and taxex imposed by the state of Michigan as well. Then there is the fact that this has been our number for 35+ years. It would not be an easy thing for us in our retiring years to have to get in touch with so many friends, relatives, business people and etc. about changing their contact with us. Then there is no guarantee that the new number would not be a bigger problem than the one we have. As someone on here said, the phone company has on their available list a lot of numbers from deadhead users. We certainly don't want to trade our monthly wrong number call for a number that might generate 10 times as many wrong numbers.

[Sinari 0]

I don't get many telemarketers. Instead, I get this phone call from a number that always goes to my voicemail because my phone is almost always off, so they say, into the phone, after hearing my girl voice on the message, "I guess this isn't *Guy's name's* phone" and then they (it sounds like one person with another person in the background) argue with each other in the background of the voicemail about the correct number before hanging up when they should have hung up after hearing a woman's voice when looking for a male's cell phone number... Does that not make sense? Is it not common logic?